


returning were as tedious as going over

by luxaucupe



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, and at least eight hundred terrible coping mechanisms, boy have i missed those tags, feat. cheating at go fish, how not to train your amnesiac, mistreatment of dislocated limbs, this. ended up much longer than i anticipated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxaucupe/pseuds/luxaucupe
Summary: you’d be scared by this, you think, but nothing much is scaring you right now. you’re not sad, not worried, not relieved. you feel two things. you feel frustrated. you feel numb. he looks like he feels the same.(point is, he seems nice enough, so you let him keep holding the screwdriver.)
Relationships: Doug Eiffel/Daniel Jacobi
Comments: 26
Kudos: 100





	returning were as tedious as going over

**Author's Note:**

> me, spending hours writing fics that maybe 35 people will even attempt to read instead of just writing for a more active community: me? emotionally attached to daniel jacobi??? loves w359 ao3 users too much to ever stop??? haha where’d you get that crazy idea  
> warnings for mild threats of violence, non-explicit sexual content, some brief suicidal ideation, and the usual poor mental health and injury stuff
> 
> today's song recs: the after party by bad books and feather by little dragon

there is a man you meet when you first wake up strapped down to that chair.

he is the man that unstraps you with a smile. cracks a joke to hide his breaking voice as he leads you through this strange building. rubs at the blood and bruises coating every inch of him like he can just wipe them away for no one to see.

he is the man that saves them _all._ you watch a stranger nearly bleed to death, tended to by terrified friends, her body torn open by a bullet, but he sews her back up without a second thought. comforts her, so cleanly easing, ensuring her time and time he’s fixed worse on himself, even if she’s not fully awake to hear it. cleans up everybody’s cuts and bruises with a quirked grin and charming sarcasm, so perfectly presented.

you watch a lot, in these moments, in the chaos of the all-new. he keeps apologizing about how clumsy he is with the sutures, despite being the only fully-conscious one in what is apparently a remarkably large radius who knows anything about how to do them. you find out a few hours later he’d been tying them off with a wrist broken in three places and an elbow ripped out its socket in another.

this man did emergency surgery with one working hand. did a good job, too. did it with a smile. this is the man you meet.

soon after, he tries to pop his forearm back into place himself, and when he can’t, he turns to the yellow-eyed woman, the other new one, the other _watchful_ one, and asks her for a bit of help.

you don’t like the gut-wrenching click as the socket settles, but the woman doesn’t seem to mind. gets it first try, just a quick firm tug, and nods as he offers a placating _thank you_ and tries to get back to work.

this man, this man with the broken wrist, he’s the one who brushes off the others’ pitying voices the minute they come to, so dismissive, like a kid being told the importance of broccoli on halloween. something-something-dead, you overhear between them. something-sacrificed-something, something-so-sorry. you’ve been partitioned to the corner, a side dish to the shitshow around you, but you know without question it’s not exactly breezy conversation. 

it’s like he doesn’t even hear it. 

you gather, after some rushed, half-baked explanations from a disembodied voice, that you are in space, and a lot has just gone terribly wrong, and a lot will _surely_ start going right from here on out. you don’t trust it. any of it. but you don’t exactly have a menagerie of choices, so you play along.

_he_ is the only one who really speaks to you, the first couple days. only one who looks at you, only one who has the time. the others have banned him from doing any tasks that require two working wrists. the disembodied voice already covers all wrist-less jobs, apparently, so he has very little to do.

no one has held a conversation with you for long enough to assign you any tasks, so you have very little to do, too.

he sits with you in your corner, tells you his name is jacobi, and reminds you that your name is eiffel. like the tower, he says. it helps. it still feels like nothing on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t forget it again. eiffel, like the tower. simple as that.

there is a man he meets when you first wake up strapped down to that chair, and it is you. 

the dinner ‘table’ (attendance almost-obligatory) is quiet as the grave until he loudly proclaims you’re being childish for picking at your possibly-food. he follows you, contraband turkey jerky packet in hand, when you walk away from table. and then he takes the jerky and shoves it into your disinterested grip. 

when you start picking at the jerky, too, he tells you you’re stubborn. 

this is the first thing that you are. you are eiffel, and you are stubborn.

he is jacobi, and he is stubborn, too.

you sit together in your quarters. well, you’re _floating,_ in what you have been _told_ is your new quarters, and he’s there, too, screwing around idly with a panel in the wall, taking it off and putting it back on again, doing his best to get used to his hastily crafted splint. you’ve requested the disembodied voice to leave you alone for a while. she said no, and then she said okay. she might still be here. you don’t really mind.

the man stares at the wall for a full fifteen minutes, and you stare at him for just as long. his hair is bleach-blond, but only at the very ends, like he’s been letting it grow out. he’s missing half an ear. he’s shorter than you, but not by much. he wears glasses. the lenses look thick.

you try to commit this to memory. this is jacobi. his hair is bleached. he’s shorter than you. he wears glasses. jacobi, jacobi, jacobi. no first name. _is_ that his first name? did you _ask_ his first name?

you ask him how he’s holding up, and he pauses, and he falls apart. 

no tears. you saw one of the others crying earlier. it was strange. tears act differently in zero-g. you’d notice if there were tears.

but he’s visibly not okay. shaking horribly, shivering like a kicked dog, clawing at the edges of his own nails at some failed attempt at a self-comforting gesture or some intense compulsion to tear himself to pieces cell by cell. he’s barely taking in air between his gasping sobs and hands spending half their time covering his own face. 

you’d be scared by this, you think, but nothing much is scaring you right now. you’re not sad, not worried, not relieved. you feel two things. you feel frustrated. you feel numb. he looks like he feels the same.

you don’t know how to comfort him. you don’t know if he even needs to be comforted. so you wait some time, maybe minutes, maybe an hour, sitting there with him. it gets boring eventually. you don’t exactly have much to keep you occupied. so you ask him how he’s feeling, and he says he’s feeling nothing, and then he looks at you and says he doesn’t know.

“i want to hurt someone,” he tells you, and you nod. “and right now, i’m not finding a whole lot of reason not to.”

you don’t need to ask why he’s keeping you in the loop on this. it’s not that he trusts you — he has no reason to. he just really doesn’t seem to care what you think. it’s as simple as that. it’s like there’s some little wire in his brain, some switch short-circuiting him between perfectly dismissive, snarky okay-ness, and a man who honest-to-god has nothing to lose and knows it. preformative detachment, rooted sloppily in the real stuff.

that’s the weird thing, though — you really don’t think he was faking his service-with-a-smile routine back there. forcing it, maybe, but not faking it. you’ve learned quickly that denial is the drug of choice around these parts.

(point is, he seems nice enough, so you let him keep holding the screwdriver.)

your strategy seems to be roughly the opposite. you think you’ll try your best to grieve for whatever these people have all lost and cheer for whatever they’ve accomplished. you think you’ll do a very mediocre job. you think they’ll buy it anyways.

not him.

“i saw the most beautiful thing in the world,” he says, and he means it. “i came up here and looked outside, and _outside_ was the most beautiful thing in the world. then, i saw that vast plane of stars again, and again, and _again._ i saw it until it _bored_ me. i saw the most beautiful thing a person could ever see, and then i saw it on the worst day of my life, and i hated it. and now, my worst day has happened all over again. and would you just _guess_ what i keep goddamn seeing.”

he laughs, and there’s a bitter edge to it that makes your lungs turn to charcoal.

“everything is so ugly now.” he lets the screwdriver float in front of him, giving it just the slightest spin with the tap of a finger. “what do you do? what do you do when the prettiest thing in existence makes you sick to your stomach?”

you tap your fingers on your leg, thinking. you aren’t sure how good of a person you’re supposed to be right now, and that’s bound to cause some problems. “move on to the next sense,” you settle on, almost icily. “you have four more, right? sight is down, so move on to touch. ruin those, and _then_ you can start complaining.”

“y’know, saying that makes you sound a lot like a man i used to know.”

you scoff. “let me guess. is it me?”

“it’s not, actually,” he says with a dead smile, and after a moment’s pause, he grabs the screwdriver from the recycled air and leaves you to your thoughts.

the panel is still unscrewed from the wall.

——— 

you meet four others, over these next few days, mingling with the crew bit by bit, like you’re a plus-one at a party and your date is passed out in the tub. it’s awkward, sure, but there’s no screaming fits, no uncomfortable hugs, and very minimal tears. they seem to have finally acclimatized to your presence. or, y’know, _‘eiffel’s’_ lack thereof.

they treat ~~price~~ pryce less like an uninvited partygoer and more like a spider on a shower wall that actually pays rent. they don’t want to kill her, certainly not, but they aren’t exactly attached to her living. and it’s not like they can just let her outside. she’s just… there. she’s there, and she helps, and you consider trying to be her friend, until you get some passive-agressive throat-clears from the disembodied voice.

she’s one of the others, too. the disembodied voice has already introduced herself as hera in the clipped conversations she’s forced herself to have with you. a good, simple name. hera, hera, hera. hera the pseudo-omnipotent. hera the ai. she gives you your privacy by nothing less than genuine effort on her part, and you’re thankful for that.

~~minkovskey~~ minkowski is all practicality, three-fourths natural born leader, and at least one-third conveniently unclassified documents. she hands you a survival guide, an employee handbook, a walkman, and a box of tapes, which she suggests you listen to ‘only when and if you want to’. at the peak of your boredom, you read through the first two. you forget where you put the rest. not like it really matters.

minkowski, she looks the closest to screaming at any given moment. not at you — not at anyone. not even at herself. just in general. just like she’d love to stand on the edge of a canyon and scream until her throat bled.

“you’re healing well,” you comment one morning with a neutral expression plastered on. “i heard the bullet hit bone. supposedly a rough recovery, yeah?”

she just shakes her head and gives you a tired smile. ~~loveless~~ lovelace gave her some blood, apparently. whatever the fuck that means.

lovelace welcomes you with the most open of arms. she tries to get you involved. teaches you how to plan gin rummy in zero-g, which she crushes you at, and poker, which you are apparently very, _very_ good at, once you get down all the rules. 

(little bits of tape on the back of each card keeps ‘em in place, but some rounds, you just let the cards float and hope to god you don’t give ‘em any torque. it’s certainly a sight to behold.)

“spider solitaire — that’s where it’s really at. but apparently that’s not good for ‘bonding’, you know, being solitaire and all. i’ll teach you that when we run out of two-player games.” this is all she says to you in the two hours you sit together playing war. but it’s earnest. it’s… it’s nice to hear, in a weird way.

war’s a strange excuse for a card game. there are no choices. a winner is completely randomized. by most definitions, hera tells you, it isn’t even technically a game. but that comes with good news — you can play it against the best ai this side of andromeda, and still win half the rounds.

minkowski, pryce, and jacobi (wrist unsplinted, though his elbow’s sprawled with fresh scars that look years old already) join in and start a rather treacherous round of go fish, which jacobi loudly and repeatedly proclaims is the only card game he has ever and will ever play. he’s also a _lousy_ cheat.

“do you have any threes?” pryce asks him.

“no,” he bullshits, as if hera wouldn’t immediately call him out on it.

lovelace wins that round in a landslide victory. there may have been tears.

“remind me,” hera chimes in, “if i ever get myself a pair of hands, that i’d love to teach you all egyptian ratscrew.”

“that’s what she said,” lovelace adds helpfully. 

“it’s a card game.” she pauses, gauging reactions. “and it may or may not rapidly progress into mild violence and less-mild shouting.”

“you had my interest,” jacobi grins, “and now you have my attention.”

“then you better think twice before earning yourself a lifetime ban from our little interstellar casino here.”

for those few hours, you almost feel like you’re _meant_ to be _exactly_ where you are.

——— 

and then jacobi continues to begin each evening lounging (see: hiding) in your room.

mostly, it’s just the two of you coexisting silently in the semi-dark. he doesn’t break down like he did the first time. at most, he’ll say something vaguely existential, give you shit about something you did earlier in the day, ramble airily about ballistics or thermodynamics or god knows whatever other science textbook he’s almost certainly had memorized since the age of fourteen.

at first, you think it’s just about the room. maybe he has some issue with the room he’s been assigned. maybe he just gets bored, or cold, or wants a few minutes out of hera’s earshot, even if that means being in yours. maybe he just really likes taking apart that wall panel.

at first, you’re _so sure_ it’s just about the room.

———

he kisses you like it’s not about you.

(it’s _not_ about you.)

you don’t know who fucked with his emotions so bad he ended up like this, but you take a mental note to send whoever it was a gift basket. he’s all fire strikers and impatience and empty intentions and the second he touches you, you don’t even care. you yield to him without a moment’s consideration.

he fucks you for the same reason he drinks. you are his perfect enabler. his meaningless vice. his second sense of five, just another box to tick to fill whatever void he was maimed with before he met you.

that’s not the problem.

the problem is the little fluttery feeling at the base of your lungs when his lips graze your neck. the problem is the blush you have to fight back when he whispers pet names against the shell of your ear, purring _baby, angel, peccadillo,_ so soft, like an afterthought, like he _knows_. the problem is the way you watch him the morning after, joking with the others with that same practiced placation, giving you those same snarky, gentle little smiles he always has, like he’s still that stranger you met when you woke up in that chair, like your heart doesn’t race every time he spares a fleeting glance your way.

the problem is you.

_you_ are the problem.

———

it’s probably just about the room.

———

you fend them off for a good, _long_ while, but in time, your curiosity and anxiety team up and get the better of you.

“hey, hera?” you call into the empty room.

“what’s up?”

“was… did i… who was i close with before — _before?”_

“like… friends? family? relationships?”

“all of the above, but mostly the latter. if it’s — if you’re okay sharing.”

she’s quiet for a while. he’s almost worried he’s scared her off, before she finally responds. “i don’t mean to leave you hanging, but you don’t usually ask about… that sort of thing. how honest do you want me to be?”

“brutally.”

“if… you’re sure.”

you nod.

“friends-wise, basically everyone on this crew bar pryce, to varying extents. you got along well with people and forgave… _concerningly_ easily. it was sweet, in a way, despite how blatantly self destructive it was. but you, me, and minkowski were closest for the most part, mostly because we never really—” she sighs. “never _really_ tried to kill each other, at any point.”

“such a lovely few years we must have had. how about family?”

“brutal honesty time?”

“brutal honestly time.”

“you have some family on earth. an ex-girlfriend, and… a — a daughter. you’re estranged. probably for the better. minkowski may have mentioned this in passing, but i doubt she’d have mentioned any details.”

“huh.” you pause, rubbing the side of your thumb. “she briefly mentioned a prison sentence, which i assume was related. what the hell did i do? i don’t need details, just…”

“you did something… shitty, and didn’t consider the consequences. something you regretted. that whole martyr complex you had going on, officer eiffel, it — it tracks. but you weren’t — you’re _not_ a bad person. you learned and grew. if you remember one thing, remember that you always meant well. _mean_ well. even if you weren’t great at showing it.”

“huh,” you repeat. “that’s… i feel like that’s gonna sink in later, but right now, it kinda just feels — irrelevant sounds mean. it’s not irrelevant, it matters, it’s just. _surreal._ it’s… like it’s not a tangible piece of my life, _this_ life, anymore, if that makes sense.”

you sit and think for a while. listen to the ship hum around you.

“still one more category, hera,” you decide eventually.

“hmm?”

“relationships.”

“is it still brutal honesty time?” she asks, and if a space ship could whisper, she’d be doing it.

“i think it kinda has to be.”

“you weren’t… with anyone. up here. not formally.”

“truthful or not, that sounds like you’re leaving something out.”

“us. we had our moments.” she does the auditory equivalent of closed-off body language. she can express so much, so elegantly. “it was difficult to know where we stood, for multiple, hopefully obvious reasons. but we — i —”

huh.

she loved you.

“you don’t have to say anything more if you don’t want to.”

“thank you,” she says, a smile in her voice. “but i’m okay. we all lost our eiffel that day, but that’s in the past. we don’t blame you. we couldn’t ever blame you.”

“that’s… that’s good to hear, hera.”

“if you’d like, i can tell you about the rest of the crew.”

“is someone suggesting _gossip?_ scandalous, hera. i’d _love_ to.”

“oh, thank _god._ i have been _dying_ to tell someone about lovelace and —”

you talk like that for hours. not even in the hyperbolized sense — you actually float there, talking nonstop to the ai for literal, continuous hours, and you treasure every minute. you don’t even notice how late it’s gotten until minkowski peeks through the door and asks if you’re coming for dinner.

“sure,” you say. “just gimme five, i’ll be over.”

she looks surprised, and then she looks relieved, and tells you she’ll set you a place.

it takes you a minute to realize that you’ve actually agreed to sit and eat a meal with them.

———

dinner is fine. you sit next to jacobi.

you’re nauseatingly jealous of the version of yourself who knew his first name.

dinner.

is _fine._

———

“we should talk,” he tells you that night, leaning against your door to stop you from dodging out it.

“we shouldn’t.”

“and why’s that?”

“i’ll say something to piss you off. i’ll pretend i don’t mean it.” you fold your hands. “and i will _absolutely_ mean it.”

“can’t be worse than us _not talking._ ”

“from what i’ve heard, it sounds like that’s the default for us.”

he shakes his head — less like he’s denying anything, more like he’s slightly-frustrated, mostly-amused. if anything, it’s at least nice to see him showing genuine emotion again. “what’s on your mind, or should i just hazard a guess? ‘who’d you lose?’ ‘who died and made you king of emotional unavailability?’ or the ever-beloved ‘what ripped-out chunk of your heart are you so desperate to make seem profound?’ two bonus points for style if you go with the latter. came up with that one all on my lonesome.”

“i’m going to assume a sugar-coated phrasing isn’t going to fly with you, so let’s skip the pleasantries. something fucked you up. more than you already were. and you won’t tell me what, because you’ve convinced some part of yourself that it doesn’t matter. but it matters to me.”

he opens his mouth, looking like he’s just so _damn_ excited to give a snide comeback. you cut him off. “i don’t mean that in the _‘it’s my past, too’_ way. that’s bullshit. you know _i_ know that’s bullshit. i mean it in the _‘sometimes it would be goddamn nice for you to share things with me’_ way. so, yeah, jacobi, who _did_ fucking die?”

he crosses and uncrosses his arms, looking like he’s trying to find an excuse to change his mind about the whole not-talking thing. but whatever he’s searching for, he doesn’t find it. 

“two people,” he says. “first was like a sister. sudden and violent and unfair. my fault as much as any other responsible party. second was… he… like getting kicked while i was down. times a thousand. times a million. that was the recent one. you’ve experienced having your whole identity scorched-earthed, yeah? now picture going through what you just went through, but without the luxury of forgetting what was missing.”

“whatever penance you think you deserve, pretending you haven’t just lost everything isn’t it. isn’t the answer.”

“i’m well aware.” he lets out a slow breath. “everything — everyone i lose becomes a piece of me. those two will _always_ be a piece of me, even if that isn’t always a good thing. as long as i carry them with me, i’ll still have something left, and there will still be someone remembering them. as _people._ as people who were very good at making themselves out to be monsters, but still as _people._ ”

there’s some lecture to be had about the sharing of burdens like these, but you’re not in the mood for pretending to speak from a place of expertise or authority, and he’s sure as hell not in the mood for listening to it, so you try to boil that idea down to its bare bones.

“well, you’re in luck. i am physically incapable of having any preconceived notions. _period._ so if you’d ever like to share those remnants with me, you are absolutely welcome to do so.”

“chances are, i already have. years with those two were already pretty personality-formative. really, it’s a miracle i haven’t started quoting shakespeare at situationally inopportune moments. in fact, let’s give it a go!” he laughs, a light sound, so gently distant, like the first smile he ever gave you. “ _i am in blood stepped in so far that, should i wade no more, returning were as tedious as going over._ ”

your hands move faster than your thoughts, stretching across the back of his neck. you pull him close with ease, and he melts into it, your grip, he really does. this time, he kisses you like he gives a damn, and you kiss back like you need him to.

this is the second thing that you are.

you are eiffel, and you are in love with him.

———

there is a man you meet this night, laughing and mourning when you should both be sleeping, and he is not invulnerable, and he is not weak for it.

it is still a long way back to earth, but you think he may yet find something worth returning for. in time. give it time.

_give it time._

**Author's Note:**

> you're all angels, keep doin what you're doin.  
> comments and kudos mean the world


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